Veteran seiyuu Kotono Mitsuishi, known for scores of top roles including Misato, Boa Hancock and Excel, has spoken out against the anime industry’s harsh treatment of seiyuu, saying it has forced them into penury and discards as soon as they become experienced rather than pay them more, causing a dearth of skilled seiyuu as a result.

Again, this news disheartens me.
I hope my purchases end up as royalties and ultimately as bonuses to seiyuu, since I know no other way to support them, other than spreading their good name (or voice) of course.

dozens of seiyuu die each decade, from over working, malnutrition, and old age. for just $20 a year (pennies a day), you can feed this poor, hungry seiyuu and her family, and make sure they get the medicine they need. Don't you think they deserve better?
call 1-HELP-SEIYUU

The only real way to support seiyuu directly would be to buy whatever they set out to do themselves, I think. Royalties are very small for the original creators of the manga many series are based on. The quantity of money a seiyuu might see from his or her work in a series could be even smaller.

They should be paid well for their labor and heart if the publisher is making money.

Perhaps they should form some sort of union.

This is a shame... it takes years for these artist to become truly good. Otherwise, the quality goes down and the customers don't want to buy it.

Crappy art/stories are not worth buying.

Compare Wingman to Video Girl Ai - for which I own all the original manga. Katsura was good, but he got much much better with experience and time. Products (dolls, games, toys, etc) are created when something is good and popular. Junk doesn't usually get popular.

This might explain why someone like Aya Hirano has tried to branch out into other forms of entertainment. To have more work.
She or her agent may have seen the writing on the wall for experienced seiyuu and decided it was in her best interest to not limit herself to doing ONLY seiyuu work.

No wonder certain seiyuu that seems to have some voice style of their own which actually can still be polished tend to be stuck on only 1-3 roles. Examples include the voiceactress who did Manabe Nodoka, and Oohashi Ayuru/Nakai Erika who did Eila. Even Kanemoto Hisako (Ika-Musume and Sorami Kanata)'s career has yet to be proven stable at this moment.

Indeed, Kotono Mitsuishi looks very good for her age, actually she looks better than when she's younger as seen in older pictures/photos. Some woman looks more and more beautiful when they age with the years, and Kotono Mitsuishi is one of them (I think).

Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon should've been the first Kotono Mitsuishi role the introduction to the article mentioned. All her other roles are secondary in importance compared to one of the top 10 most recognized anime characters of all time.

Get some more skilled actors you mean... and now you know why Anime is getting unpopular in America. And they blame it on piracy?! Bullshit. No quality voice actor= no pay. I mean nobody wants to watch an entire anime when the voice acting sucks and the voices are carried over FROM another dubbed anime you watched -_-

I think it's more of an attitude problem. A lot of American voice actors still have the mindset of "it's just a cartoon it's good enough". Perhaps they just don't pickup on the cultural nuances. Off the top of my head I can think of only three anime where I prefer the English dub to the Japanese sub. Those are "Cowboy Bebop", "Black Lagoon" and "RahXephon".

The anime industry is taking a beating on both sides of the Pacific with the economy.
I hope things turn around for all our sakes.

And rape my eyes with fansubs that drag my vision to the extreme bottom and far left corners of the screen, all while making me try to distinguish some unreadable "anime-fitting" font from similarly-colored backgrounds? No thanks, I'd rather watch anime, not decipher CAPTCHAs.

It's not really skill American voice actors that have a problem of being overused. It's that they lack flexibility in their vocal abilities. Disney and Pixar are a good example of this, they have some awesome voice actors that can play multiple roles and you'd never notice unless you either read the credits or watched the "making of". That's what a real skilled voice actor is, someone that can completely change the sound of their voice to fit a role without sacrificing the tone the character should be conveying.

For the same reason people complain about it with American VAs - lack of vocal range. In particular, the ones that are really popular these days have very little, whereas the ones that actually have some aren't popular at all.

It's funny to see western otaku flaming reappearance of young seiyuu/mourning over the lack of veteran seiyuu while most of them dl anime. Big mouths but did nothing to help them, huh? Shut up and go looping Slayer or Sailor moon anime or just buy the whole lots of them.

Okay, smarty... What happens if you start a family? What happens if your parents fall ill? What happens if YOU develop an illness yourself? Do you still keep working your ass like a mule for next to nothing, all in the name of good art?

Right because hell every "experienced" actor out there like say Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Lucy Liu and all that are still working for under the piddly sum of what they used to earn from days doing extra work right? =P

I agree with Kotono Mitsuishi. A lot of the skilled seiyuu are being dumped and the ones that are currently in the industry are unskilled and can only be type cast to certain roles or should be.

But if seiyuus are that concerned on keeping expert talent in the industry then its better to working at the same price the younger seiyuu work at.

In short its all about money the experienced seiyuu really don't give a damn about the industry itself but more about the cash in their pockets. A seiyuu who truely loves her work would do it no matter if her pay was low.